The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer--And of the Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San Francisco

The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer, told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist who terrorized mid-nineteenth century San Francisco. When San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. He learned that Sawyer was a volunteer firefighter, local hero, and a former "Torch Boy," racing ahead of hand-drawn fire... More Description

The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer, told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist who terrorized mid-nineteenth century San Francisco.

When San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. He learned that Sawyer was a volunteer firefighter, local hero, and a former "Torch Boy," racing ahead of hand-drawn fire engines at night carrying torches to light the way. When a mysterious serial arsonist known as "The Lightkeeper" was in the process of burning San Francisco to the ground, Sawyer played a key role in stopping him, helping to contain what is now considered the most disastrous and costly series of fires ever experienced by an American metropolis. By chronicling how Sawyer took it upon himself to investigate, expose, and stop the arsonist, Black Fire details Sawyer's remarkable life and illustrates why Twain would later feel compelled to name his iconic character after him when writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

A vivid portrayal of the gritty, corrupt, and violent world of the Gold Rush-era West, Black Fire is the most vibrant and thorough account of Sawyer's relationship with Mark Twain, and of the devastating fires that baptized San Francisco.

Robert Graysmith's career as an editorial cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle led to his access to and interest in the details of the Zodiac murders in the San Francisco area during the late 1960s and 70s. His extremely popular book Zodiac (1986) was reprinted 13 times and translated into French. This exhaustive study of the unsolved crimes received refreshed popularity in 1990, when the New York police blamed it for the copycat killings that were occurring at that time in New York, accusing it of being "a textbook."

Other nonfiction works about criminal investigations by Graysmith include: The Murder of Bob Crane (1992), about the death of the star of Hogan's Heroes; and Unibomber: A Desire to Kill (1997).

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